A Long Line of Cakes

by Deborah Wiles

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” cried Phoebe Tolbert. She usually had her hair done by Melba’s mother, at Locks by Leila, outside of town. But she couldn’t resist the chance to watch the soiree unfold.

  “And the cake is coming from the Cake Café!” Finesse warbled as she sailed into the party room. “It’s a bon voyage gateau! And Mrs. Wilson is bringing tablecloths from the Sunshine Laundry!”

  “I need my notebook!” cried Phoebe Tolbert, waving a desperate hand in the mirror at Lamar Lackey. “It’s time to take notes already!” Lamar handed Mrs. Tolbert her big brown purse and kept foiling away, dabbing on Mrs. Tolbert’s signature hair color, strawberry blonde.

  At the appointed time, the barbers put away their combs and scissors, turned off the dryers, washed out the brushes, and swept up the hair on the floor just before the town arrived with plates of deviled eggs and meat loaf sandwiches and platters of fried chicken and a mountain of salads: potato salad, green salad, broccoli salad, macaroni salad, and seven kinds of Jell-O salads shaped like fluted flying saucers with bits of carrot or nuts or pineapple suspended in their jiggling orange or green or yellow orbs.

  Tot Ishee brought her homemade pretzels, which no one would touch but her husband, Ferrell Ishee, Halleluia School’s fourth-grade teacher. Mr. Ishee was known by most of the town as Tater. Tater and Tot’s little girl, just two years old, was named Martha but was affectionately called Spud. She careened around the room in a little yellow car that she pushed with her feet. She ran over the toes of anyone who got too close to her. She does it on purpose, decided Phoebe Tolbert, who positioned herself—for safety as well as reporting—back in Lamar Lackey’s twirling barber chair with her notebook, pen, and perfect hair.

  Emma had helped make the Light as a Feather Bon Voyage Yellow-Yellow Sheet Cake with Sugar-Sugar White Frosting for the soiree. It had to be frosted and decorated after the lunch rush, so the Cakes were late bringing over their masterpiece, which didn’t matter because the cake would be the last thing eaten.

  “Remember, you’re going to help me,” said Ben to Emma as he hoisted the cake in the Cake kitchen with his father.

  “I remember,” said Emma. She had no idea what to expect. She wished she had facts, or a chart, or some choices—research on how to run interference. She wished she had better instincts about these things.

  She had taken the time to write some possibilities on the index cards in her bedroom. She shoved them into her shorts pocket but had little hope of their being helpful.

  Ben is such a quiet boy, was one thing she wrote, which was true unless he was fighting with his brothers. She wrote that, too. Ben leaves his clothes on the floor. Ben eats with his mouth open. Ben likes baseball more than people. There. That was better. And all true.

  “Let’s go!” said their father, who had a smear of frosting across one of his glasses lenses. He didn’t seem to notice.

  Into the barbershop they trooped, every single Cake but Arlouin, who would follow with Gordon. Ben helped his father carry the cake to the back room, to the long, tall, metal table that had been set with Mary Wilson’s freshly starched tablecloth and Evelyn Lavender’s cut-first-thing-this-morning flowers.

  “Wow,” said Leo Cake. “This is quite the table!”

  “It’s from Snowberger’s Funeral Home,” said Miss Eula as she plopped down her daughter’s famous zucchini bread. “They use it for … for their work,” she said with a solid flourish. She smiled at Ben and Ben nodded back. “The Snowbergers can’t come today. They’ve got a funeral to tend, but you’ll meet them soon enough.”

  Jody, Van, and Roger were right behind Leo and Ben, cleaned up and cranky, carrying fancy plates, froufrou napkins, and a cake cutter and candles, respectively, arguing over who was carrying the most important items.

  “Big table!” they chorused.

  “It’s for dead people,” Ben informed them.

  The brothers looked around as one, to see if any dead people were being displaced.

  “Good afternoon, Benjamin,” murmured a radiant Finesse.

  Ben shot his sister a knowing look. Emma fished in her pocket for her note cards.

  “Ben does not know the names of the states in alphabetical order, but I do!” she told Finesse.

  Finesse completely ignored Emma. “I’ll bet you helped decorate this beautiful cake!” she said to Ben.

  “Oh, he doesn’t decorate,” said Emma, putting herself between Ben and the cake. “He just does the dishes. Badly. Could you show me where the bathroom is, Finesse?”

  “If I have to,” answered Finesse, but she kept her eyes on Ben as she gestured to a closed door.

  “Frances!” called Pip. “Come fix this radio station!” and that broke the spell.

  Arlouin came through the front door carrying Gordon, who was crying because he’d had to take off Eudora Welty’s tutu and leave it soaking in the Cakes’ kitchen sink. It was filthy, clabbered with mud from the week’s play. He summoned a batch of fresh tears when he saw Honey arrive in her tutu. It had been washed and blocked by Mary Wilson at the Sunshine Laundry.

  “I forgot to wash it,” said Arlouin to the disconsolate Gordon. “I’m sorry.”

  “Come here, Sticky Buns,” said Emma. “I have a surprise for you.”

  Mary Wilson waved another tutu as she came in the front door of the barbershop. “I got it!” she said. Cleebo’s mother had stitched it up haphazardly from a yard of nylon netting she’d bought from Miss Mattie. “Hope he don’t mind white,” she said.

  Gordon didn’t mind at all. He donned the tutu on the spot, and twirled right into the guest of honor, Dr. Dan Deavers himself, who was being cheered into the barbershop by the Aurora County All-Stars.

  Finesse forgot about changing the radio station. She was beside herself with glee. “He’s out of his coma!” she trilled, “and he’s going back on television!” Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes shone like the sun, and her smile was as wide as the Mississippi River. This was her moment. She had planned everything to the tiniest detail. The soiree would be stupendous.

  Dr. Dan had spent time in Pip’s barber chair earlier that day.

  “Aren’t you getting tired of this style?” Pip had asked, like he always did.

  “Don’t try to switch me off it,” Dr. Dan had said. He always said that. “This is my style.”

  “Well, you’re out of style, James Robert,” Pip had replied as always, using his grandson’s given name.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Dr. Dan had said. As always. “But this is my style and nobody does it like you do. Thank you, Poppy.”

  Now Dr. Dan came through the door of Schotz’s Barbershop with the shiniest hair in Aurora County, all conked and pomaded to beat the band. He looked slick, and he was. He scooped up Gordon and deftly plopped him right into a surprised Phoebe Tolbert’s lap, tutu and all. Then he turned to the applauding crowd, his fans.

  The Mamas smiled all over their faces. The Papas puffed up, proud. Pip stood beside his grandson the famous actor. Finesse stood by Ben Cake, tipping toward him like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Emma wormed her way between them and asked Finesse to help her cut the cake. Finesse directed Emma to Melba Jane and her clipboard.

  “To the assembled!” Dr. Dan began in his basso profundo voice.

  And that’s when the dogs got in.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a room filled with good food and bad pretzels must be in want of some chaos.

  Especially if Spiffy, Alice, Bo-Bo, and Hale-Bopp missed their breakfast and lunch because of the All-Cakes-on-Deck pie baking, carrot cake making, lunch rushing, and party cake baking (with a hefty dose of friend making thrown in for good measure). Especially if each Cake thought another Cake had fed the dogs. Especially if the doors to the party venue are left wide open, front and back.

  If you fill a room with food, hungry dogs will come.

  And they did.

  All except Eudora Welty, who wasn’t hungry, anyway. She’d eaten pl
enty of Honey’s scrambled eggs that morning. She came to the party with her people, was sleeping by the front door of the barbershop, and couldn’t be bothered to move from her shady spot.

  “It is with a full and yet heavy heart that I leave you!” boomed Dr. Dan, just as Bo-Bo began to love up on him. “And you, too!” said Dr. Dan with a laugh, not yet realizing what was happening.

  Right behind Bo-Bo was Alice, then Hale-Bopp, with Spiffy scrabbling up the rear, all of them happily barking and bouncing and weaving around the stunned onlookers and speeding, lickety-split, to the party room at the back of the barbershop, where the smells were the strongest and the meat loaf sandwiches were the first to be swallowed.

  “No-no-no!” cried Finesse. Melba dropped her clipboard. The chase was on.

  Gordon and Phoebe Tolbert clung to each other as the tide of humanity spun their barber chair in a full circle and followed the dogs to the back room, with everyone shouting and pushing or pulling or ducking aside to make room for the dogs or the Cakes chasing the dogs.

  “Bless your hearts, bless your hearts!” Tot Ishee cried, over and again, as she stood near the cake table with her terrible pretzels, her arms raised high with the platter so everyone—human and dog—could froth around her. Pretzels spilled from the platter and onto the floor.

  “Mes amis!” shouted Finesse, but it was no good. The mayhem was beyond her.

  Spud Ishee squealed with delight and rode her yellow car into the middle of the calamity. Mr. Ishee grabbed her. The yellow car spun like a tiny tornado into Mrs. Varnado, who screamed and backed herself into a case of hair clippers.

  The radio played “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” while the dogs chomped and skidded and changed direction, evading capture. The partygoers slipped and skidded and lunged and fell trying to grab a dog or catch a platter that clattered to the floor—there went the fried chicken. The floor was crisscrossed in a dozen different ways as people shouted and dogs barked and there seemed no end to the chaos. The Cake boys shouted the loudest and grabbed the hardest, but their dogs would not be caught. They ran from the party room back out to the barbershop, back into the party room, like out-of-control yo-yos flying through the air.

  “My soiree!” cried Finesse. “Somebody help!” She looked around for her great-grandfather but couldn’t see him in the bedlam.

  “Whoa, doggies!” said Dr. Dan. Spiffy ran past him with a trail of pretzels behind him. He was spitting them out, so he was considerably slowed down. Dr. Dan reached under Spiffy and picked him up just like he’d swooped up Gordon. Phoebe Tolbert gave a yelp as she wondered if Dr. Dan was going to deposit a dog in her lap as well as a small boy. There simply was no room!

  But Dr. Dan strode past Phoebe Tolbert, into the party room, and to the back of the barbershop where, with a heroic flourish, he deposited Spiffy outside the back door, just as he saw Ruby Lavender approaching. He gave her one of his megawatt smiles. “Here you go!”

  Spiffy plopped onto the ground, his energy spent, and Ruby peered in the back door, into the noise and movement and shouting.

  “Good garden of peas!” she whispered. She stuck her notes from her garden reconnaissance mission into her front overalls pocket and took out the zucchini cookie her mother had given her. She fed half of it to a grateful Spiffy, who ate it lying down. It took the taste of pretzel out of his mouth. He’d had a sandwich already, and he was almost full.

  Emma managed to snatch Alice by the collar and drag her to the back door. “Help!” she called to Ruby. Ruby tempted Alice with the other half of the zucchini cookie. “Come on, girl!” It worked.

  Bo-Bo had not stopped in his pursuit of the party table, even when his collar got caught on the corner of one of Mary Wilson’s tablecloths. He pulled the tablecloth right off the punch table along with the plastic punch bowl, the lime sherbet punch, and a clutch of plastic punch glasses. The shouting crescendoed as the punch bowl met the floor.

  The crash made the floor slippery and sticky and petrified the dogs. They were easier to catch then. Bo-Bo and Hale-Bopp were still inside. Hale-Bopp had a fried chicken leg in his mouth. Ben, Jody, Van, and Roger moved as one and were assisted by Cleebo, Wilkie Collins, and the Tolbert Twins, and soon all dogs were out the back door, wet and sticky and still hungry.

  “Let’s get them home and hose them off,” said Ben.

  The Cake boys immediately began to move in concert.

  “Wait!” said a voice from the back door. Finesse. She did not look happy. Ben stopped moving. His lunkhead brothers were impervious to commands from outsiders, however, and moved across Main Street and toward the Cake Café with the dogs. Thank goodness.

  Cleebo, Wilkie, and the Tolbert Twins—on instinct, as soon as they saw Finesse—ran around to the front of the barbershop.

  Emma had no time to consult the list in her pocket. She would deal with the situation on instinct.

  “He’s an idiot!” she said of her big brother.

  Ruby looked at Emma, confused. Ben raised an eyebrow at his sister.

  But Finesse now knew Ben was an idiot. “How could you!” she spit.

  “He’s a moron!” said Emma.

  “You’re not helping,” said Ben.

  The bile rose in Finesse’s throat. Her love for Ben had evaporated.

  “You and your family!” she shouted. “You’ve ruined everything!”

  “It’s not his fault!” said Ruby, even though she hadn’t seen what happened. This sudden defense of a boy made her blush.

  “You keep out of this!” said Finesse.

  “Make me!” said Ruby, now defending herself. She thrust her chin at Finesse and clenched her teeth.

  “Yeah!” said Emma, engaged and energized and out of her mind with a wild desire to protect her friend and her brother. Suddenly Finesse looked nothing like Annie. Emma stepped between Ruby-and-Ben and Finesse. She had never done anything remotely like this in her life. It gave her electric shivers. Now what? she asked herself.

  “Wait a minute!” shouted Ben. “Wait a minute!” He had no idea what to do. But at that very moment, Miss Mattie came striding toward the back door of the barbershop with a mop in her hand from Pip’s broom closet. That made up Ben’s mind.

  “Let’s go,” commanded Benjamin Lord Baltimore Cake.

  The three of them—Emma, Ben, and Ruby—made a run for it.

  Inside the barbershop, folks got busy and righted chairs and picked up spilled flowers and tossed out half-eaten sandwiches. They recovered the surviving plastic cups from the punch bowl disaster and mopped the lime sherbet punch off the floor. They patted on Finesse and told her that the party would go on. Of course it would. It was a wonderful party already.

  “Formidable!” said Old Johnny Mercer, one of Finesse’s biggest fans, although it sounded like he said formy-table!

  “What’s a soiree without a little mayhem?” asked Sheriff Taylor. “Do you want me to lock up those dogs?” he joked.

  Finesse tried a smile but felt tragic instead. “Tragique,” she said with a breathy sigh.

  Parting Schotz was as meticulous about his floors as Miss Mattie was about hers, and no one was a better mopper than Miss Mattie, so she had grabbed the mop as soon as she’d arrived and seen the chaos, while Miss Eula filled a bucket with soapy water from the barbershop sink.

  Finesse accepted all the good wishes and compliments with her usual practiced air of professionalism. She was not a screamer, so she knew it was not the real Finesse who had yelled at Ben Cake. At first, all she could see was her hard work ruined. But she knew better than to be a quitter. If she’d been a quitter, they’d never have had an All-Stars game and pageant.

  Her anger fizzled further as she remembered a time in this very room when she had caused some commotion, a year or so ago. And everything had turned out all right. Everything but House’s arm, and that would heal, too.

  She finally remembered the radio. She turned the dial to Pip’s favorite station—“songs for eighty-eight-year-olds!” (wher
e was he?)—and Nat King Cole serenaded Finesse, telling her she was unforgettable in every way. Finesse looked into the barbershop mirrors and smiled at her reflection. “I am,” she whispered. “Yes, I am. Oui, je suis!”

  The tenor of the room was almost back to normal, or as close to normal as this soiree would get. Arlouin Cake, however, was still in shock. She stared at the party cake on the party cake table. “Cakes are always professional. Cakes come from a long, distinguished line of itinerant bakers …” She trailed off.

  “This is nothing!” Dr. Dan told Arlouin. He patted on her in an effort to make her feel better. “You should have seen the party that put me into a coma!”

  “Hush, James Robert,” ordered Mary Wilson. She ­patted on Arlouin as well. Mary’s husband, Woodrow “Pete” Wilson, had the punch-soaked tablecloth in his arms. “Tablecloths can be washed,” he said in an encouraging tone.

  Arlouin came out of her reverie and made more apologies and wondered where her husband had gone. At least the cake had stayed on the party table along with most of the food.

  “This is not a catastrophe,” Miss Eula said in a comforting voice. “It’s just some spilled punch.”

  Miss Mattie, who hated disarray of any kind, doggedly mopped while Miss Eula dried and Finesse said something to Melba Jane, who had found her clipboard but didn’t scribble on it. Melba didn’t like sudden chaos. It put her into a state of stillness.

  The All-Stars stood with their parents, and everyone waited for the next thing to happen in that way you wait when there has been some kind of upset and you know you want to be tender to everyone.

  House held Honey in his one good arm and Honey wrapped her arms around House’s neck. They stood next to their father, Leonard Jackson, who washed the punch bowl and cups. Tot dried. “Bless your heart,” she said whenever House’s father handed her a cup. Tot’s little girl, Spud, was spirited off to a nap by her father. Her yellow car rolled under Lamar Lackey’s barber chair. Lamar took over the mopping from Miss Mattie and she let him.